Most landlords assume Canada's anti-spam law is a problem for marketing departments. It is written more broadly than that, and a landlord who emails a vacancy to a list of past applicants is inside it.
The good news is that the day-to-day messages you send are mostly not the ones it governs, and the rules for the ones it does govern are short.
This is tooling, not legal advice. The government's own material is the authority, and the two pages worth reading are the Government of Canada CASL hub and the CRTC's frequently asked questions.
What the law actually covers
CASL governs the commercial electronic message, a message sent by email, text or similar that encourages participation in a commercial activity. The test is the purpose of the message, not the size of the sender.
Where landlords land:
- "Your rent is due Friday" is not marketing. A message about an existing tenancy, a repair, an inspection or a payment is a transactional message about a relationship that already exists.
- "We have a unit coming available, interested?" is. Sent to a list of past applicants, that is a commercial message and the rules apply.
- A newsletter to former tenants is. So is a message promoting a new building, a referral bonus, or a service.
If you only ever message your current tenants about their own tenancy, you are largely outside the marketing rules. The moment you keep a list and send to it, you are inside them.
The three requirements
For a message the law does cover, the CRTC describes three obligations, and they travel together.
1. Consent. Either express (they actively agreed, and you can show when and how) or implied (it arises from a specific existing relationship, and it expires). Implied consent is the one that catches people out, because it is time-limited and quietly runs out.
The practical consequence: record consent as a fact, not a memory. Who, when, through what wording, and which channel. A list of email addresses with no record of where they came from is a list you cannot lawfully send to, whatever its origin actually was.
2. Identification. The message says who sent it and how to reach them. For a landlord operating through a company, that means the company, not just a first name.
3. Unsubscribe. Every commercial message carries a working way out, it stays working, and you act on it promptly. Not a reply-and-hope. A mechanism.
Where this actually goes wrong
Not in intent. In record keeping.
- The spreadsheet with no provenance. Addresses collected over years from viewings, referrals and a website form nobody kept the wording of.
- The unsubscribe nobody wired up. A footer link that does nothing is worse than no link, because it tells the recipient you have a process when you do not.
- Implied consent treated as permanent. It is not, and the clock is not visible unless something is tracking it.
- Texting a list. SMS is covered too. It usually feels more personal and therefore more exempt, and it is not.
What software should do about it
Consent should be a stored record with a timestamp and the wording, attached to the person and the channel. Unsubscribe should be a real mechanism that takes effect immediately and cannot be undone by re-importing a list. Sender identification should come from your account details rather than being retyped per campaign.
That is how Wealthru handles it: consent tracked per person and channel, a working unsubscribe on every commercial message, and the sending company identified on the message. Not because it is a feature anyone shops for, but because the alternative is a landlord discovering the gap at exactly the wrong moment.
The short version
- CASL applies to a small landlord, not just to marketers.
- Messages about an existing tenancy are generally not the problem.
- Anything sent to a list probably is.
- Consent, identification and unsubscribe travel together on every commercial message.
- Implied consent expires, and only a record can tell you when.
If you are running a real list, read the CRTC's guidance directly. It is shorter than you expect.